White stripes on the cut edges of the cut out areas in the image.

[ZerTerO]

Hello dear forum members,

 

when I cut out an area in an image with an alpha channel, Paint.Net gives me white streaks on the cut edges. Gimp doesn't have these cut edges. These edges can also be seen in the representation in the game. In Windows 10 "Photos" you can see these edges in a direct comparison. The image is a texture from the game Quake 3 Arena.

 

I added a PNG file as an attachment. On the left the file was edited with Paint.Net and on the right with GIMP. Does anyone have any idea how I can avoid these white edges?

 

Best regards

ZerTerO

 

Edited October 22, 2020 by ZerTerO

[MJW]

9 hours ago, ZerTerO said:

when I cut out an area in an image with an alpha channel, Paint.Net gives me white streaks on the cut edges.

 I'm not clear on what you mean. What were the operations you used to cut the edges?

 

Was the image originally PNG, or was it some other format? Was it saved directly as a PNG (with the white edges), or was it saved in some other format, then reloaded and combined to form the image saved as a PNG?

 

Finally, what is a "restrained area"? I'm not familiar with that term.

[ZerTerO]

 I'm not clear on what you mean. What were the operations you used to cut the edges?

>> Select area with S and delete with DEL

 

 

Was the image originally PNG, or was it some other format? Was it saved directly as a PNG (with the white edges), or was it saved in some other format, then reloaded and combined to form the image saved as a PNG?

>> I tested it with the original TGA format (from Quake III Arena) and a PNG version (from Quake Live). The edited image was saved directly as a PNG. Always with the same result. With GIMP, I don't have these white cut edges. Regardless of the file format.

 

Finally, what is a "restrained area"? I'm not familiar with that term.

>> I have now corrected the topic title.

[MJW]

12 hours ago, ZerTerO said:

Select area with S and delete with DEL

Not certain what "select area with S means," but in any event, I've never seen a white edge after deleting something, so unless you can explain the steps to reproduce the problem, you're unlikely to get an useful response. Frankly, the terseness of your response struck me as suggesting you were offended that I asked for more details. Perhaps it wasn't meant that way.

[Ego Eram Reputo]

Try setting the selection anti-aliasing of the selection to off (pixelated)

 

 

REF: https://www.getpaint.net/doc/latest/Toolbar.html#20

[ZerTerO]

No, I am and was not offended, just had very little time. Here is my approach. I demonstrate by using an image from the getpaint.net website:

 

1. Open Image and select an area with S (Shortkey)

 

2. Highlight the area to be removed

3. Remove area with DEL / ENTF (in Germany)

4. This is how it looks in the end

5. Save image...

6. ...as PNG-file

7. And now open the picture with Windows Photos and the white borders are visible.

8. Zoomed in...

 

As already written, these edges are also visible in the game. Interestingly, they are not visible with IrfanView or XnView. Only with Windows Photos and in the game (Quake III Arena).

 

Thank you for the help and look forward to your answer. You can test yourself with any picture at any time. With the GIMP, these borders do not appear. "Antialiased / Pixelated selection quality" does not change anything.

 

Download: Output files from Paint.Net and GIMP

 

Best regards

ZerTerO

[Pixey]

Another way:

 

1.  After you delete the area go to the image where you deleted it from and use the color picker to get the same black color.

2.  Make a new layer and move it below the image & add the black color.

3. Flatten.

[ZerTerO]

22 minutes ago, Pixey said:

Another way:

 

1.  After you delete the area go to the image where you deleted it from and use the color picker to get the same black color.

2.  Make a new layer and move it below the image & add the black color.

3. Flatten.

The cut out area should remain transparent...

[Pixey]

At step 4 please try using AA's Assistant (you may need to use it twice) before saving at .png and see if it makes any difference.

 

[MJW]

12 hours ago, ZerTerO said:

Only with Windows Photos and in the game (Quake III Arena).

 

That seems like a pretty significant detail.

 

What are the PNG settings when you save the file in Paint.NET? The settings are displayed in a dialog titled "Save Configuration" (or the German equivalent) just before the image is saved

[ZerTerO]

Here are the settings:

 

[ZerTerO]

Quote

At step 4 please try using AA's Assistant (you may need to use it twice) before saving at .png and see if it makes any difference.

 

I don't want to use AA's Assistant. As I said, in my opinion this is a bug in Paint.Net. I have no such problems with the GIMP. Even with the standard settings.
 

Also included a download so everyone can check the pictures: https://workupload.com/file/n4nucWrmpYS

Would be nice if we could find a solution without any external plugins... 😉

[barbieq25]

I have not been able to replicate the issue. Anyone else?

If it only does that with 2 programs, then it probably is not a PDN issue per se.

 

If the area is to be blocked out by a solid colour, why not do a filled rectangle with no border.

Have I missed the point entirely?

[LoudSilence]

Neither can I replicate this, there is no way this is a paint.net issue, one last try: could you record a video of cutting, saving, and opening it, then upload it to somewhere to show it to us? Maybe there is something being left out

Edited October 30, 2020 by LoudSilence

[Rick Brewster]

The only difference I'm seeing between the PNGs saved with GIMP vs PDN is that GIMP filled the area with transparent black (#00000000) whereas PDN filled it with transparent white (#00FFFFFF). They're equivalent, but for some reason Photos is showing a white border.

 

You should be able to work around this by filling the area with transparent black. You can do that by setting the primary color to transparent black (choose black, then set Alpha/Opacity to zero) and using Edit -> Fill Selection (backspace).

 

I may also change PDN to fill with transparent black, although that might cause problems with other people's workflows ...

[MJW]

I have a plugin Transparent to Transparent Black that replaces all transparent pixels with transparent black.

 

Whether that fixes the problem is hard to predict, since I also have not been able to reproduce it. My edges never have the white line when viewed with Windows Photo.

[ZerTerO]

On 10/30/2020 at 5:00 PM, Rick Brewster said:

The only difference I'm seeing between the PNGs saved with GIMP vs PDN is that GIMP filled the area with transparent black (#00000000) whereas PDN filled it with transparent white (#00FFFFFF). They're equivalent, but for some reason Photos is showing a white border.

I think that's exactly the problem. I don't know why, but the transparent white areas cause a white border on certain image renderers. Why does PDN use white areas? GIMP, Serif Affinity Photo, and Corel PaintShop Pro (i've tested these programs) don't do this.

[ZerTerO]

On 10/30/2020 at 5:00 PM, Rick Brewster said:

You should be able to work around this by filling the area with transparent black. You can do that by setting the primary color to transparent black (choose black, then set Alpha/Opacity to zero) and using Edit -> Fill Selection (backspace).

That worked!!! Apparently that was the problem. It might actually be necessary to change the color to transparent black. 😬

 

Thank you for the help and for your patience. I can still create a video of my process while editing the image file, but it's actually simple: Open the image, mark the area, delete the area, save the image as a PNG (all with standard settings).

 

Wouldn't it be an option if the user could choose the transparent color in the settings?

 

Many thanks again! 😁👍

Edited November 1, 2020 by ZerTerO
Typo and additional information.

[MJW]

1 hour ago, ZerTerO said:

Thank you for the help and for your patience. I can still create a video of my process while editing the image file, but it's actually simple: Open the image, mark the area, delete the area, save the image as a PNG (all with standard settings).

 

 

I've done that, yet never produced white edges when viewing the resulting images with Windows Photo.

 

Here's something for you to try: Do the steps that produce the problem, and confirm that it does produce the problem. Now open the image again in PDN, and use the Color Picker to see what color is in the transparent region. When I read the image back into PDN, the transparent pixels are transparent black, even though before I saved the image, they contained transparent white. If you get transparent white instead, that explains why you get different results.

 

However, if you do get transparent white, the question is why? As was recently discussed on this forum, all transparent pixels are converted to transparent black when images are saved in PNG files. I know almost nothing about this, but if your files contain transparent white, I wonder if somehow a different routine, in a different DLL, is being used to save PNG files.

[Rick Brewster]

2 hours ago, ZerTerO said:

Why does PDN use white areas? GIMP, Serif Affinity Photo, and Corel PaintShop Pro (i've tested these programs) don't do this.

 

It's just an old, obsolete design decision from 2004. Alpha composition wasn't supported well; heck, v1.0 didn't even have the checkerboard background, IIRC. "Transparent" areas were just rendered with the color in the RGB components. So it would've been weird to delete/erase an area and have it turn black. 

[MJW]

I always assumed it was because The ColorBgra.Transparent -- which is based on Microsoft's Color.Transparent --  is transparent white.

[ZerTerO]

9 hours ago, MJW said:

However, if you do get transparent white, the question is why? As was recently discussed on this forum, all transparent pixels are converted to transparent black when images are saved in PNG files. I know almost nothing about this, but if your files contain transparent white, I wonder if somehow a different routine, in a different DLL, is being used to save PNG files.

Hello. I uninstalled paint.net and deleted the following directories:

 

%LocalAppData%\paint.net

%ProgramFiles%\paint.net

 

I then reinstalled paint.net and did exactly the same with the picture as described here. I get the white borders and the information is saved as transparent white in the PNG file. So there are no plugins installed and I also have these white borders when I save the picture as TGA (which Quake III Arena needs).

 

 

 

I have an unchanged Windows 10 installation and I was able to reproduce this problem on 2 different notebooks and on 2 other PCs. I don't think it's because of my Windows and program installation. The information is saved as transparent white by default...

 

The result is far worse when I use the Lasso Select (Shortcut S, S) tool.

 

We can also make an appointment and I'll demonstrate via TeamViewer. 😄

 

Edited November 2, 2020 by ZerTerO
Additional Information and Picture.

[MJW]

1 hour ago, ZerTerO said:

I then reinstalled paint.net and did exactly the same with the picture as described here. I get the white borders and the information is saved as transparent white in the PNG file.

 

As I said before, I know nothing about how PDN saves PNG files. However, I wouldn't be surprised if PDN doesn't contain the routines to save PNG files, but instead relies on routines built into Windows to do it. Perhaps there's something specific about your computer's version of Windows, or other programs installed on your computer, that causes it to save PNG files differently than on most other people's computers.

[ZerTerO]

28 minutes ago, MJW said:

Perhaps there's something specific about your computer's version of Windows, or other programs installed on your computer, that causes it to save PNG files differently than on most other people's computers.

I have a new Windows 10 installation and no additional software on the PC. I reinstalled the computer especially for this to test this statement.

[AndrewDavid]

6 hours ago, MJW said:

Perhaps there's something specific about your computer's version of Windows, or other programs installed on your computer, that causes it to save PNG files differently than on most other people's computers.

I have been able to reproduce the issue on my PC viewing the saved PNG in Windows photo.

I don't think it's an issue that can be corrected in the short term.

Just an issue that can be corrected with the different ways suggested in this thread.